10 Tracks That Changed My Life by Karl Izumi from Spider

We asked Karl Izumi from Spider to contribute to the 10 Tracks That Changed My life Series. It’s an interesting mix of punk tracks as expected, but also a healthy selection of classic rock.

“A Hard Day’s Night” by The Beatles. I was 6 years old when I stole my sisters Beatles’ record. I liked this song because it was fast, up beat amd wild for a 6 yr old kid. I thought they were wild because they screamed before the guitar solo on this song.

“Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin. I was turned onto Led Zeppelin by my cousin. This song made me want to play guitar and be like Jimmy Page

“Walk This Way” by Aerosmith. My friends introduced Aerosmith to me and again the rock guitar riffs just fascinated me. At age 10, I was a determined guitar student.

“Surrender” by Cheap trick. This song was cool and I was very interested by Rick Neilson’s sense of style & weird guitars

“Bodies” by Sex Pistols. At 10 years old I was introduced to punk rock by an older teenager in my neighborhood. He had “Never Mind The bullocks” playing on his record player with a huge Sex Pistols poster in his garage. I was blown away by Johnny Rotten saying “Fuck this and fuck that.” I have never heard such language in a rock song before. Of course, I had to know more about this punk rock stuff. Definitely this was a game changer!

“Commando” by The Ramones. After being intrigued by this new music called punk rock, I saw Don Kirshner’s Rock concert on tv and he introduced The Ramones as a punk rock group so my eye and ears were glued to the set. “Commando” was one of the songs in the set and instantly made me a fan.

“London Calling” by The Clash. The 80s were upon us and I wanted to know more about the British punk bands and of course this album came out. I had to have it once it came out. The video appeared on tv and made The Clash popular.

“World Up My Ass” by Circle Jerks. After going to my first punk gig at the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was turned onto the film “The Decline of Western Civilization” which featured the Circle Jerks. After seeing it and owning the record, I went and bought the Circle Jerks “Group Sex” album and taught myself how to play the whole entire album on guitar. I spent a week trying to learn all the songs by ear.

“Search and Destroy” by The Stooges. Even though I was part of the LA punk scene in the 80’s, I didn’t know about the Stooges til later on. But once I heard this song and learned of Iggy Pop’s stage presence I was an instant fan. This song captured my attention and I wanted to be in a band that sounded like them.

“Clocked In” by Black Flag (Dez Cadena on vocals). After being older and a working stiff, this song would always play in my head at work. This song actually made me terminate my 9 to 5 job that was slowly killing me with boredom. I walked off a few jobs because of this song. Now I’m finally happy with what I do. That song saved my life.